Twenty Years in the Life of Pride
by dandeliondreams
Summary: Or, The Growth and Development of an Erstwhile Homunculus. Selim Bradley learns how to live by practicing living.


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_Twenty Years in the Life of Pride_

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(0)

"_Mama ... Mama ..._"

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(1)

The wet nurse screams when he bites down with precocious teeth, drawing blood along with milk.

Her silence is purchased without too much fuss. The baby is hurriedly weaned.

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(2)

No one sees when, with a blankly curious look on his face, he slowly twists the captured fledgling's wing. Its blood beats hot and fast under the skin. Something splinters with a faint crunching noise. The bird screams.

No one sees the shutter-quick passage on his face, from curiosity to confusion to guilt to fear.

He runs to Mama. Mama can fix anything.

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(3)

She reads to him from a book of pictures. He is happy that bears have mamas, too.

He starts to wonder why bears have papas, but he doesn't.

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(4)

"Doggy!"

The blonde woman almost flinches away from him when he toddles towards them, hands splayed. She twitches the leash.

"Come, Black Hayate."

Selim sits on the sidewalk in dismay as they vanish around the corner.

"Doggy?"

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(5)

Without the Fuhrer's salary, she can't afford to waste money on personal tutors. Not if she wants to be able to put him through college.

The principal assures her that he runs the safest private school in Amestris, and all the top brass entrust their children to her care.

"It's just ... he's so small for his age," she says tenderly, still hesitant, until Selim looks up at her with a tremulously hopeful smile.

"Mama, will I make friends at school?"

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(6)

In art class they draw families.

Selim finishes much earlier than his classmates because he only has two people to draw. Bored, he spends the extra time sketching a faint figure next to Mama: tall, dark haired, and otherwise featureless.

With some more thought, he remembers that Papa Bear had a mustache, so it only makes sense to scribble black crayon over the face.

Something is still missing.

"Oh!" he says, and makes Papa smile.

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(7)

They call him "mama's boy," but it takes him surprisingly long to realize it's an insult.

He tells himself it doesn't mean anything that his classmates are taller and stronger than him. He knows he's better than all of them, and proves it when he brings his flawless grades back home.

She beams and sticks his report card to the wall, making sure to show it to Führer Grumman the next time he visits.

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(8)

She thoroughly hid the one picture she couldn't bear to destroy. She should have known better than to underestimate the ingenuity of a child.

"Mom, is this you?" he asks, covered in dust and splinters. Her instinctive lecture dies in her throat when he adds, "Is that ... King Bradley?"

Her unlined face shines through the sepia of the battered photograph. She leans on the arm of an unmistakable man, radiating happiness in wedding finery.

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(9)

Brimming with pride, he tells the entire history class that Führer King Bradley was married to his mother, so that makes him practically his father.

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(10)

They linger for weeks on the Ishval War, and even take a field trip to the remembrance museum. Something cold and heavy solidifies in his stomach.

Afterwards, a classmate says, "Your dad was a monster."

Selim talks into his knees and doesn't meet anyone's eyes.

"I don't have a dad."

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(11)

You are better than this, he reminds himself. Fighting is beneath you.

When the boys start to take turns throwing pebbles at the spot on his forehead, he gives up his high-handed notions and lunges for the biggest one. He laughs off the clumsy punch, but Selim snarls the worst words he knows and bites down.

The taste of blood bursts into his mouth. For a moment he stands dazed, basking in the rusty taste of triumph, before the bully knocks him backwards into a desk, and everything goes dark.

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(12)

He tiptoes into his mother's powder room, refusing to draw attention by turning on the lights. After a long ten minutes of warily squinting at the tiny, unhelpful print on the backs of bottles, he picks the most promising one and begins to cover the concentric red ridges of his scar with paste.

He blushes furiously the next week when an unopened bottle of "concealer" appears on the table, subtly in front of the rest, but he swallows his pride and breaks the seal.

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(13)

The First Family is rarely important enough to merit mention in the class texts, but he visits the library to learn more.

"Mom ... Can I ask you something?"

"Of course. What is it?"

_Why did you name me after your dead son?_

_Do you look at me and see him?_

_Am I just a replacement?_

"Can we buy new uniforms? Mine are getting too small."

With obvious pride, she coos over her growing boy, but he isn't in a obliging mood, so he excuses himself from dinner early and shuts himself in his room.

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(14)

Alchemy is frighteningly easy once he puts his mind to it.

The intricate sigils of the textbooks give way to cleaner, more elegant circles of his own. He doesn't need more obscure symbolism than necessary, not when the concepts shine in his head as if emblazoned there.

It's not until he starts reading about alkahestry and the dragon's pulse that he begins to wonder if he needs to draw circles at all. Surely the flow of energy in his own body is a kind of alchemical circle, exchanging food and breath for life and movement. And if he can hold the symbols in his mind, it seems like child's play to guide the reaction properly.

He makes a circle of himself by pressing his hands together, as if in prayer, and touches the ground. A perfect cube carves itself from the dirt. Selim grins with satisfaction.

Inexplicably, he recalls a giant eye, but can't remember where he's seen it.

_._

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(15)

At Führer Mustang's inauguration, Selim stands in the crowd and feels his words pierce to the marrow.

_I will protect all that I can ... The people below me will protect those below them ... Together, we will protect the entire country._

Something painful surges in his heart and makes him tell his mother, "I want to join the military as a State Alchemist."

He watches, horrified, as she begins to cry.

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(16)

"You should just admit you're only joining for the research funding."

"Alchemy is for the people!"

"Yeah, right. State Alchemists don't follow that motto—they're just dogs of the military."

Selim fiddles with his new Academy uniform and glares at his classmate. "Being useful to the military is linked to being useful to the people. If enough of us use our alchemy rightly, we can change it. We can redeem the institution of the State Alchemists."

_I can redeem the name of Bradley,_ he doesn't say.

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(17)

He doesn't cry at the funeral, but only because after the past few days of weeping, his eyes feel as parched as the eastern desert. The attendees press well-wishes into his hands, but he ignores them all, still as stone.

The thought of human transmutation briefly crosses his mind, only to terminate in the bone-deep instinct that trying would mean certain failure and death.

He dreams of being dragged back through immense stone doors and wakes in a cold sweat.

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(18)

"They say you don't need circles for your alchemy, Cadet."

Selim's blood freezes as Führer Mustang walks into the headmaster's office, looking particularly grim.

Mustang's inscrutable eyes flick over him summarily as he takes the headmaster's chair. "Sit down, Bradley."

"Yes, Your Excellency," he says faintly. He wasn't careful about showing off with his friends, was even proud when they started boasting on his behalf, but this wasn't exactly the outcome he had in mind.

Almost casually, Mustang asks, "What do you know about human transmutation?"

He opens his mouth to say, "Nothing," but the Führer interrupts in a tone that makes him want to hide.

"Do not lie."

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(19)

He's in the middle of reconstructing a bookstore's broken window when a brash voice interrupts.

"What's a kid like you doing with circleless alchemy, Selim Bradley?"

He turns on the civilian with a frown, almost snapping, "That's Major Bradley to you, sir," before he remembers that the most recent Führer Order stripped State Alchemists of their military authority. He can still deal a stiff reprimand, at least.

Something about the man's eyes stops him in his tracks, though, so he simply says, "I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage, Mr. ... ?"

"Elric," Edward says, and something lights up in Selim's face.

"You're not by any chance—"

"No, I—"

"—related to Alphonse Elric? The author of _The Alkahestry of Xing?_"

"—left the State Alchemists a long time ago ... wait. Since when has Al been more famous than me?"

Selim disregards the man's baffled pout.

"You must be his brother! This is—this is—fantastic," he says eagerly. "I'm looking for a senior investigator for my medical research. If you could introduce me to him, I think we could really improve the quality of artificial nerves in automail. I also have a working theory of alchemy-alkahestry duality I'd really like to have an expert look at ..."

The look of awe on Edward's face makes him trail off in confusion.

"Mr. Elric ... ?"

"I was just remembering the Selim I used to know," Edward says, wearing a grin that makes years fall from his face. "You've come a long way since you were a ... a kid."

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(20)

He doesn't usually walk past the Fifth Laboratory, out of a sense of inexplicable unease, but he thanks fate for the whim when he hears a faint voice through a broken window.

"_Help me._"

He hastily jumps the fence and scrambles toward the window, calling, "Hello? Is anyone there?"

"_It ... hurts ..._ "

"I'm coming," Selim says, mouth thinning to a determined line. He kicks away the jagged shards of glass clinging to the frame so he can struggle through. The office is empty, but he can hear the voice whisper through the corridors.

"_Papa? I'm hungry ..._ "

He curses and hurries onwards, almost falling into the collapsed floor. The sight of a small white hand protruding from the rubble below makes his heart leap into his throat.

"Hang on, kid!" he shouts, carefully dropping into the basement. "I'll get you out of—_woah!_"

Something bursts through the rubble towards his outstretched hand, something with a single bulging eye and a mouth full of gleaming teeth. It clamps down on his hand with a terrifying snap, and he realizes it's actually bitten off a finger.

A wave of unbelievable pain drives him to his knees with a scream. His vision pulses, blackens—

—and suddenly the monster is gone. The only sound is his frantically pounding heart. He flexes his undamaged hand in disbelief. Not even a scratch.

_God, this place is creepy._

Selim doesn't quite run, but he sets a brisk pace back to his apartment, skin crawling. While he vomits, he tries to convince himself he only hit his head on the concrete and had a vivid hallucination. His head is still buzzing with the echoes of screams.

Behind him, the shadows smile.

His dreams are filled with howls of torment.

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End file.
